Tag Archives: Inspirations

Before I start to delve into blog posts where I write my reactions to news stories in Education, I thought I might write a post on my teaching inspirations (though I am sure my list will grow over the years). They are numbered, but they are not organised in any particular way:

1). My family members. They are my first ever teachers, and they exude all of the qualities I admire: kindness, patience, honesty, effort, discipline, patience, encouragement, and love. I believe all of these qualities are integral to teaching, and I aim to retain them for all of my life.

2). All of the teachers who have ever taught me and the teachers I have ever known. Whether it is their enthusiasm, their approachability, their effort, or something else, all of the teachers I have known will have influenced me in some way. They even might have inspired me by making me think I would approach something differently to them.

Sometimes in class, some of my teachers have made asides on teaching, usually a teaching tip or a question, i.e. ‘How would you teach _?’. I have noted these asides down, either on paper, or just in my memory (there is a tip for any other aspiring teacher reading this). They excite me for the future, and it combines my love for learning (about whatever subject I am studying at the time) with my love for teaching.

3). The most important inspirations for me, perhaps, are the students past, present, and future. From the students who love learning, to the students who struggle, they all inspire me to try to become a teacher. I want to help them nurture at least a like for learning, not for grades, and to help those who struggle discover that they can do things, that they can lay down paths for themselves and travel far.

4). The stars (teachers and students) of the Educating[…] series, broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK, which I highly recommend you to watch if you can. The first Educating[…] series I ever watched was the second series, Educating Yorkshire, which I think was what helped me to realise, at seventeen years old, what I definitely wanted to do in terms of a career.

I was so excited to watch every episode, and I used to drop questions such as ‘So did you watch Educating Yorkshire last night?’ into conversations with my friends and teachers. The more I watched the programme, the more passionate I felt about teaching, even to the point where I wanted to see what a potential teacher was doing in a lesson observation I walked past by one time in sixth form. I did not see what was happening, of course, but I really wanted to know how things were going and perhaps learn from it. I wanted to know what the class was learning about, what techniques the potential teacher was employing, and if both the students and the teacher were enjoying the session. I still have this fascination with learning, from both the student perspective (how could it be received?) and the teacher perspective (how could it be delivered?).

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Well that is my (current) list of teaching inspirations, but now I want to know if anybody in Education has ever inspired you? Comment below.